News Release

Call for Final BLM Public Land Sale Bids

The public has until Monday, June 18, 3:00 pm to bid on approximately 265 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public land in the Coachella Valley in Riverside County. The public lands to be offered for sale, encompassing 49 parcels, are mostly small, 5-acre tracts in areas known as Sky Valley and Indio Hills. Bids must be submitted to the BLM California Desert District Office located at 22835 Calle San Juan de Los Lagos in Moreno Valley, California. The phone number is 951-697-5200

John Kalish, BLM’s manager for the Palm Springs-South Coast Field Office, noted the sale was intended to accomplish two objectives: to transfer public lands that are difficult and uneconomic for BLM to manage into private ownership and; to generate funds to acquire lands under the Federal Lands Transaction Facilitation Act (FLTFA). Under FLTFA, the proceeds from the sale of public lands are available to acquire private lands that had been nominated for acquisition. Some lands in the Coachella Valley have already been nominated for acquisition using FLTFA funds.

The public lands being offered are scattered tracts surrounded by privately owned land and the sale is consistent with BLM’s California Desert plan amendment for the Coachella Valley area, completed with full public participation in 2002. Most of the surrounding tracts were sold to private owners in the 1950s and 1960s, Kalish said.